FANTASTIC ROMANCE

Imaginary Love with Lyrics

***

 Cinema of Love

Dear Vince,
Hey there big guy. Happy belated birthday! Sorry to be so tardy with my felicitations. I wrote a song for you a while back. The feeling holds true blue. I think you might like it. Who knows, you may even need it? Sometimes a little love goes a long way.

Number 44

You’re so sweet
Number 44
Special Ed boy turned a movie star.
You make me laugh,
You make all the girls sigh.
So how my, how my, how my
Gonna make you mine?

Gonna channel George Jones,
Write a country song.
Gonna learn the guitar,
Come on strong.

Got a secret heart,
Want to let it shine.
Be a fool for love.
Imaginary
That’s the very,
Best kind.

Like your silly dance moves
And your dirty boy talk.
Think you’ll be a great dad,
Want to sit on your lap.

Do you see tiny things?
Can you give it all back?
Are you as good as you seem?
Is it part of the act?

Yes it’s foolish, it’s mad.
It’s true I only know you from afar.
I’m make-believing who you are.

Smart girl,
I wear glasses but I don’t like facts.
Born late-March, Aries baby.
Sexy cave-man of the zodiac.
Eat your meat on the bone,
Babe I like it like that.

Pioneering,
You’re always on the run.
Go slow my love, be still.
Stop your thinking, start to dreaming.
Share your pillow bar with me honey.
We’ll wake up
Sunny morning, windy city
Brew the coffee, you’re still snoring.
I’ll make you bacon sandwiches to go.

You’re so sweet
Number 44
Special Ed boy turned a movie star.
You make me laugh,
You make all the girls sigh.
So how my, how my, how my
Gonna make you mine?

Please, please
If you let me,
I could be your Little Darling.
And my lovely, my lanky
Secret Bad Henry,
Sweetest 44
I’m pretending, make-believing, you could be my Bad News Bear.

...If only you could hear the song performed live, accompanied by budvar and shimmering glockenspiel.

It’s a shame you're so whole hog famous Vince because I think we’d really enjoy hanging out. I’m not a movie star or anything, but I just may have that special shopworn, IOU sparkle magic you've been looking for. You won’t spot me in ‘Faces & Places’ so let me paint you a jazzy little picture. I’m a schoolteacher with brown hair and green eyes. According to the observations gleamed from actors in my meisner class, I am/look: very Irish, like a cat, nervous, like such a tough guy; have a kind face and nice teeth, and clean up attractively in the fashion of a tawdry librarian.

My interests are simple. I favour the cosmic American music of Gram Parsons but the soundtrack to my life would have to be Karen Dalton’s ‘It’s So Hard To Tell Who Will Love You the Best.’ I read too much. Lots of different stuff but I’m a steady fan of Truman Capote and I try to revisit ‘A Christmas Memory’ every year even if it does give me heartache thinking about poor Queenie, all wrapped up in Fine Linen, and lost dogs and kites and lonelyhearts the world over. R.I.P. Queenie.

I carry a joke-slide in my wallet for emergency purposes. I prefer pictures of people thinking, not smiling. I’ve had 2 root canals, and still, I love candy. I make good sandwiches. Last year my friend Donna taught me how to make a plain bread & butter sandwich, the trick being to sprinkle lots of sea salt on thick slabs of butter spread onto soft wholegrain bread, cut on the diagonal. They are just incredible Vince! If you like naps, and I distinctly recall you saying that you did, I think you’d appreciate a delicious bread & butter sandwich. If not, no problem. I can fix cold cuts.

Most importantly, I think you and I could talk, heart to heart, about the movies. I bet my bottom dollar the tennis court demolition sequence in ‘Shoot the Moon’ wrecks you every time. Hot nose fumes overwhelm you when Shirley MacLaine freaks out on the nurses in ‘Terms of Endearment’ to GET DEBRA WINGER HER SHOT!!! ‘Two-Lane Blacktop’ and ‘Badlands’ may be cinematic touchstones, but deep down Vince, you’re more ‘Freddie Got Fingered’ than Fassbinder, and that’s what you makes you so special. We may quarrel over wallpaper and baby names but I think the two of us would agree, hands down, on ‘Uncle Buck’ as a top ten desert-island pick.

I am a great admirer of your work Vince. My dog-eared copy of ‘Dodgeball’ is lovesome proof; no man ever looked finer in regulation gym shorts. I thought your performance in ‘A Cool, Dry Place’ was quietly inspired, and, I might add, painfully unsung. And the way you act with children warms me like an easy-bake oven. Remember in ‘Old School’ in the earmuffs kitchen scene when you coy-protectively kiss the head of your baby? Donna and I agree that that scene alone is evidence of a genuine loving-kindness in you. When I read nasty tabloid rubbish chronicling your bad-boy antics - the tale of you canoodling young girls in Prague, or the time you were supposedly rude to the staff at a sushi restaurant – mostly, I say to myself, “lies, rotten lies!” Recalling the prayer-like hush of Donna's voice: “I mean, he reeeaally kisses that baby’s head,” helps me forgive.

Well, I’m starting to ramble so I better say my goodbyes Vince. I wish you all the best. Keep up the good work.

Yours,

L

Symphony of Love

Ring. Ring.
Hello.
Hello.
Press ‘record.’
Ok, here we go:

Well we could talk of many things. To begin, how about all the strange convergence music brings? And exactly how it is that savage birds can learn to sing?

I THINK YOU MUST KNOW.

Please tell me about the places you’re from and name your favorite trees. I’m curious. What records did you play when you were blue? And did some divine lyric ever save you?

Maybe we should move on to discuss the art of balladry. Let’s share our thoughts on northerness and gallantries, try to understand essential things. According to you, is what Bob says true, that songs are ‘wishful dreams or trips to foreign countries’?

And on and on the questions go. I have to ask the big one, it’s my job you know:
So what’s it really like to be a great swimmer?

DON'T ANSWER.

I would rather wade in cool waters with you, stir the fish and feel your shivers.

Still, this is an interview and I have more inquiries to pursue. There are answers to questions I need to know, about poetry and the phantom roots you sow. Take for instance Baudelaire. It’s madness, the shades I see of you in there. Did you read him? Do you agree? Are you climbing up some old romantic family tree?

IT DOESN'T MATTER.

I would rather strip a page from the book and be your dark flower. Steal away inside your rainy vaults, if only for one hour.

Slipping. I’m slipping from my script again. Back on the topic of origins, we could explore more about your childhood home. What’s the weather like in Wainfleet? Are there seasons there? Do locals call it Ontario’s ‘Little Rome’?

HA HA.

You must know by now I’m playing games. Posing thorny questions to ignite your leafy flames. I’m trying to read you like some unusual weather vain. Forecast: heart, skin & brain.

TALK OF WEATHER DRIVES ME INSANE.

I would rather know what you were like when you were seven. Did you collect atlas moths? Did you believe in heaven?

Ok, back to business. I’ll try to keep the flow. Write some notes in the margins. Speak clearly. Remember to take it slow.

So how about your upcoming tour? There’s something people care to know. How do you enjoy the thrills of being on the road? Passing through a million shiny cities and smoky bars, performing gigs in dusty cathedrals, eating breakfast out of jars – I imagine it must get awfully rough. Facing the endless fixing of mics and booms. Mixing backstage girls with hotel rooms...

DON'T TELL ME.

I would rather keep you for my own private troubadour, spill gin in the tub and lock the door.

Now our time is running tight. You’re a busy man and I’m sure you have other plans tonight. Just one more thing I need to know. I’ve been thinking a lot these days, about past wreckages and ships at sea, love and grievances, and the lines in your songs. And I wonder what you might be saying about lost channels and the marks on your palms? Are these maps of possibility? Animal constellations stretching to infinity?

DON'T ANSWER.

I believe it is as you sound, like an unstoppable river with wings, a timeless symphonic railway.

And here I go

Track 1
The Sea Song



Quietly
Oh oh oh oh quietly
So so so so quietly

You came on to me
Like a stage animal,
You were howling free

And I felt those soft screams

And your creature voice, it stayed with me
And your sharp tongue, it played with me

And now I’m all at sea –
Rocking and reeling, spinning and feeling
Rocking and reeling, spinning and feeling
‘Cause you’re just my kind
The perfect find

So far away
So far away

Quietly
Oh oh oh oh quietly
So so so so quietly

You came on to me
Like a willow tree

And you’re a sticky beast
‘Cause your sad leaves, they clung to me
And your strong arms, gave shelter and hung ‘round me

And now I’m all at sea –
Floating and bobbing, chocking and sobbing
Floating and bobbing, chocking and sobbing
‘Cause you’re just my kind
The perfect find

So far away
So far away


Quietly
Oh oh oh oh quietly
So so so so quietly

I could sing this song, try to turn you on
Like slow shy heat,
Have you fall at my feet


‘Cause you’re just my kind
The perfect find

So far away
So far away

And I’m all at sea -
Among the ships and the sharks
In the storms, in the dark
Shaking and throbbing, shaking and throbbing
Shaking and throbbing, shaking and throbbing


So far away
So far away

Quietly
Oh oh oh oh quietly
So so so so quietly

Spend some time with me
Tell your secrets and lies
Waltz the shoreline, climb the stars
Shed your furs

Dry your eyes darling,
Dry your eyes

‘Cause you’re just my kind
The perfect find
And I’m all at sea –
Crashing and yearning, aching and burning
Crashing and yearning, aching and burning

So far away
So far away


Quietly
Oh oh oh oh quietly
So so so so quietly

You came on to me
Like a honey bee, with summer speed
Stung my ashen heart
Made it swell and bleed

And now I’m all at sea –
Swimming and swimming and swimming and sinking
Swimming and swimming and swimming and sinking
‘Cause you’re just my kind
The perfect find

So far away
So far away

Track 2
Land of Fjords



Oh I know a place of beauty so rare
It flows from the gulf stream up into the sky
With rivers of grass and fields of snow

My darling true one
Would you meet me there?
In this season of grace it’s a place we could go

Pack your paper and pens, tune your diamond guitar
Bring your slow moving smile, your furious words
All that glorious skin

The waters are deep and we’ll be travelling far

Come build a secret with me in this strange southern land
A tropic of light and blue steam with snowcaps and cliffs rising up from the sand

Come build a secret with me
It’s calling you in

Figs and cassis, berries and gin
We’ll feast off the trees, strip the flesh to the bone
Drink the wilderness up

I’ll wear a dress of ferns
Sunder this ring of vines,
Breath air in

I’m awake, I’m alive
Shaking beneath a leopard’s skin

From ancient roots of poetry you sang nature sublime
Come find me, come find me
Look up -
Give your thinking heart to mine

You’re howling and howling and howling
My sweet lonesome wolf

I hear you, I see you, I’m feeling it too
Come build a secret with me
Look up,
My darling true one
I know that it’s you

Oh change it is glacial, and hearts, they can freeze
But we have time,
And this new world awaits with warm waters to ease our pains and miseries


Come build a secret with me
We’ll carve a path as we go
It’s steep and it’s rocky -
Lend a hand,
We’ll move steady and slow

Oh I know a place of beauty so rare
If you could, would you meet me there?
In spectral wonder with hearts laid bare

I’ll raise you up
Drain the water from your lungs

Come build a secret with me
It’s calling you in
Come build a secret with me
My darling true one

I’m tired and I’m old but I can still feel the sun